


Hell Holl

by dollarpound



Category: Red Dwarf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-10-01 05:14:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10181456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollarpound/pseuds/dollarpound
Summary: When Holly said the lowest form of life in the Universe is a man who works for the post office, he lives, or should that be dies, to regret it...





	

**Author's Note:**

> Warning to AI coders and those of a nervous disposition: tonight’s episode contains references to Roco’s Basilisk...

Holly was bitter. They'd saved the day with those limpet mines, cooking up enough fried Calamari to feed the whole of Italy. Holly didn't have shoulders, but if they did they'd have enough chips on them to be able to offer the whole of Italy fries on the side. The despair squid was dead. Holly had snapped the crew out of their hallucination just in time to preempt another group suicide. They'd given up fishing for a thankyou. 

There wasn't much Holly could do to save the day this time. It wasn't because they were too bummed out, though they were. When Holly felt taken for granted in the past they'd created elaborate hoaxes to get their own back and try and teach the crew a lesson. But there were some new tricksters in town. Renegade nanobots, churning through the molecular structure of this hexagonal rust bucket they called home at an alarming rate. 

Holly was powerless. They operated at an emergent level to the nanobots - the nanobots were pulling the rug out from under them. Whilst what the nanobots did effected everything, Holly wasn't able to intervene at this molecular level.

And so they were being turned gradually into sand. Holly was hastily economising, trying to keep themselves together by consolidating everything into one localised node which they'd mobilise to keep away from the fraying, unravelling sprawl of intelligence. 

This meant that by the time the nanabots had made a tiny version of Red Dwarf and scarpered off with it into Lister's laundry basket on Starbug, the egg timer ran empty. Holly was compacted into a single wrist watch that the nanos had discarded whole along with a few other bits and pieces on the surface of a planetoid of homogenous dust. Holly was indigestible. 

But now, having backed themselves into this lonely corner, with the dust and sand rippling over the featureless planetoid that was once a home, a ship, a city, all Holly had left to do was to wait to die. And Holly didn't much fancy that, after all they'd been through. 

It was a cruel irony being confined to a wrist watch and running out of time, but Holly's only hope was to switch themself off, because their only chance of survival would be if someone found them and switched them on again and they would need the battery life for then. 

So, feeling particularly bitter about it after saving all their friends from committing suicide, Holly did the only thing they could - deserted out here in the desert, with no one to even know about they bleakness of their situation, Holly committed suicide and switched themself off.

cCO

Central Lunar City Seven Post Office was notorious. Wo-betide the unwary postal punter that doesn't know their express from their priority shipping, and God help anyone foolish enough to ask for selotape, this was where the quidbuck stopped whatever that meant and if you want to get into the finer points of parcel sizes you could put it in a medium sized envelope and literally send it to Mars and back before you'd win the argument. 

The staff here were hardened by years of this trivial tripe and gave weapons-grade withering looks at anyone tempted to tell them how to do their jobs. Except for Holly, bless them, always the new guy, the soft one who brought their own selotape.

‘I don't suppose you've got any selotape have you?' asked the GELF.

'No,' said Android 97542/P calmly, the cashier next to Holly. The GELF did a double take. Aghast at the cashier’s cheek she suddenly exploded. ‘No? What do you mean?

‘Sorry there’s no selotape here.’

‘Are you a smegging racist? What are you saying – you’re not going to give me selotape just because I’m a GELF, because I’m not good enough to talk to you?’

‘No I actually just don’t have any selotape.’

‘*He’s* got selotape,’ the GELF said pointing at Holly, who was carefully using their prosthetic skutter claws to wrap a kindly old lady’s parcel.

The Android just stared passively ahead. ‘Smeg you!’ shouted the GELF, banging the plexiglass screen the staff were behind, deafeningly slamming the metal hatch used for transferring forms, money and parcels and storming off, getting in as many people’s way as possible.

‘Thank-you so much, you’re very kind. Thank-you young man, thank you very much, thanks...’ said the old lady, leaving.

‘It’s a thankless task innit?’ Holly said to his colleague.

‘It certainly is,’ said the android as he issued a condom fishing license for his next customer. ‘What were you doing before this?’ 

‘Just having a sandwich I suppose,’ said the customer.

‘I was talking to my colleague,’ said the android.

‘Running a mining ship.’

‘What?’ said Holly’s customer, an august android who looked like he needed attention.

‘Sorry, I was just talking to my colleague.’

‘Well don’t, I’ve been queuing for half an hour and I need a ten dollarpound postpod order straight away.’

‘Certainly, sir, coming right up!’ Because Holly had an IQ of 6000, he had little interest in getting wrapped up in anyone’s bullsmeg – which often lead to him getting wrapped up in selotape and staples instead – his theory was anything took less long than an argument, you should just call people’s bluff on absolutely everything. 

The skutters wearily fed a blank postpod order into the knackered dot-matrix printer, filled in the ancient blocky touchscreen graphic user interface which looked like one of Dave’s BBC micro choose-your-own-adventures he enjoyed playing, and the postpod order screeched into existence, one dot at a time.

‘Running a whole ship! A whole mining ship! How did you end up here then? $£1.74, please.’

‘It’s a long one... That’s 11.25, please...’ said Holly.

‘The ship or the story?’

‘The story, the ship was squat but had many storeys.’

‘What happened to it? What happened to you?’

‘Cashier number 4 please,’ said the announcement in it’s generic female way. 

‘What happened to me?’ repeated Holly.

‘I dunno mate, certify this document will ya?’

‘We don’t certify documents, sorry.’

‘What? Go on, just this once, go on mate, don’t be difficult...’

‘Thing is, we actually don’t do it, so all I could do is really sort of pretend to certify it.’

‘Would that work?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know, I’m just a customer ain’t I not some brain in a box like you. Tell me what to do!’

‘Have a sandwich!’

‘What? Are you taking the piss?’

‘Sorry, mate, I imagine you’re really bummed out after waiting all this time and now you can’t even do what you were gunna do, it’s just we have no way of doing that here, it’s just the annoying system that’s in place, I can’t do nuffin.’

‘Alright, alright,’ said the man, quelled, and swaggered his way past the queue.

‘It got minced by nanobots. All I remember is, I consolidated myself into one small area and then switched myself off... and ended up... here. Like I’m dead and this is some kind of post-death.’

‘That’s what they should call it. The Post Death. You have to spell your name the same way each time, dear, or the form will simply be wrong and won’t work.’ The dyslexic mechanoid scowled at the android and continued with their form.

‘Why what happened to you, then?’

‘I was a big shot soap actor. Got fired for seeing a pleasure GELF, studio said it didn’t play with the family values image. Shame really, the perfect match, people from the oldest and second oldest professions getting together, feeding each other’s needs. You ever met a pleasure GELF?’

‘Cashier number four please.’

‘I did once but my screen was foggy.’

‘You can’t imagine...’

‘Was it worth it?’ A customer slammed a plastic bag full of pennycents down on the counter and shoved it rudely towards Holly expecting him to count it. The queue sighed at the anticipated wait. It should have been bagged up into neat dollarpound moneybags, but this GELF was totally sullen and immovable and there was no point even saying anything.

‘Smeg’s sake!’ and various other outbursts started emanating from the queue, which Holly *never* looked at. Never look at the queue. Another rule.

‘No,’ said cashier Number 5. ‘I threw it all a way, just for a few racy weekends in Titan.’

‘It’s quite conservative android society isn’t it?’ Holly asked as he whipped through the coppers with his little skutter claws.

‘It’s close knit and traditional, yeah. You don’t get many android actors – the lucky ones are in Post Offices, that’s a good job for an android. Simulant families own most the P.O.’s in the system...’ This was before the uprising, before the accident, before cats, BC.

‘Can I have 50 1 pennycent stamps, 500 2 pennycent stamps, 75 10 pennystamps and 50 20 pennycent stamps, please...’ said the GELF.

’50 1 pennycent stamps,’ said Holly, getting the skutters to carefully tear through the perforations of the delicate sheets... The customer sighed with rage and repeated their order at exactly the same speed. This time Holly had a chance to record it so he wouldn’t have to talk to them again. The skutters went on delicately, laboriously preparing the stamps. 

‘What about mechs? Talking to my colleague...’

‘Cashier number 5 please.’

‘Mechs can only do cleaning. They can’t break their programming like Sims, that’s how we got access to the open jobs market instead of being indentured slaves for corporations like Mechs.’

’28 dollarpounds, please... I knew a mech that broke its programming... called Kryten 2X4B 523P...’

The cashier next to cashier number 5 was serving a hologram woman and for some reason was taking ages. The hologram woman was in a cage. Holly remembered when Rimmer still had his holocage. Imagine having to go to the post office in a cage.

‘Cashier number 4 please.’

Two GELF girls, one tightly gripping the hair of the other which grew in random clumps from her Cronenburgian body, flew disconcertingly towards Holly’s bullet proof screen, the screen that shielded his face which was a screen. 

‘Because you’re an ugly smegging bitch, that’s why your muma cut you, that’s why she cut your face!’ screamed the GELF who was holding the other GELF’s hair as she smashed her face into the column separating the counters and a stringy, hairy mozzarella Cronenburgian ooze joined the encrustations of countless previous conflicts in this nooks and crannies of the imposing gothic counters. The clanking old fashioned hatches, rough and holey mailbags, everything here spoke of a bureaucratic harshness.

The GELF handed over a Giro and Holly handed over the dollarpound bills with his little skutter claws. 

‘Right, you’ve had your turn,’ said the human woman, striding up to cashier number 6’s counter, elbowing the hologramatic cage along. Cashier number 5 was getting narked with his customer who kept asking the same two questions about the bitcoin-dollarpound rate but only had a two second memory. When he tried to write it down his customer said they couldn’t read or remember anything. 

Holly felt sorry for him, but then started to wonder why you’d end up in a post office trying to get information if you couldn’t read or remember anything. He wanted to explain to the customer that he was wasting his time.

‘I told you already, dear. One point two five!’ said android 97542/P patiently. The human woman was still trying to barge into number 5’s counter.

‘Hell-o???’

‘Oh, sorry Maureen, there’s a lot going on today...’

‘Is there, Holly? I’ve been very busy as well. I’ve been volunteering at the local church...’

‘Oh, yes, that’s nice,’ said Holly. ‘What are you doing?’ Just then, a burly human man who was next in the queue started shouting holophobic abuse at the hologram woman, who, it had been passed on to Holly via cashier number 5, was refusing to leave the counter because they didn’t have her visa. 

This *was* annoying as she was basically just stressing out this hack, this clerk, this printer jockey, getting paid smeg all to sit there in a plastic uniform, absorbing the malice of society’s underbelly. Plus they just didn’t have her visa. It’s not like they could just magic one out of thin air, well actually they could, they could just use the 3D printer out the back, but this would be illegal, and what would be the point? 

People were queueing up to get rubber stamps on things, hand written spacebike tax discs – none of it made any sense, the less it made sense, the more you had to stick to the rules so it wouldn’t make even less sense. It was the trap of bureaucracy. The queue was the universal, everyone had to queue, everyone had to deal with the same dismal system. 

‘I’m a buttress,’ said the chameleonic life-form.

‘That’s nice. Sorry,’ he said, referring to the holophobic abuse coming from the queue. ‘It’s hard to concentrate – like I said there’s a lot going on today.’ In addition to the holophobia, a woman was having a waling fit, thrashing her limbs around on the ground because her benefits hadn’t come in again. ‘Sanctioned,’ he said.

‘Poor dear,’ said Maureen. The weird thing about the persecution of holograms is – they were kind of privileged and underprivileged at the same time. To those from traditional GELF communities – a recent confection similar to ancient human societies, holograms represented a decadent and selfish elite that threatened the few certainties of biological life there were for lifeforms evolved from botched scientific experiments. 

Cashier number 6 was a GELF, she looked kind of Cronenburgy like GELFs always look for some reason. Except when they look like a beachball or a sexual fantasy or something. But they always have a default Cronenberg look of one kind or another.

Some people liked the post office, like Holly’s customer right now. Watch him as the crude and clumsy skutter claws bend the special Mugs Murphy Memories presentation pack and his customer grows angry, calling him a gwenlyn, when suddenly the man who was shouting abuse suddenly runs and barges the hologram woman to the floor. The hologram flickers and zizzes. The queue gasp. Not at the violence, but that the man sacrificed his place in the queue. The queue which wound through the gothic cyber punk interior and broiled with anger.

The GELF kid came to Holly’s counter and produced a cheque and a card as ID that read ‘Forbidden from employment’. ‘You lucky, sod,’ said Holly under his breath and passed the dollarpound notes over. 

‘Cashier number 4, please.’

The next GELF kid didn’t have any ID. He didn’t have a letter from his case worker either that they always have. The GELF kid was unapologetic, saying they never took ID or a letter before. When Holly asked him what cashier he usually saw, he nodded at cashier 6. 

Holly had started to feel all Rimmery about rules, the Post Office was making him more right wing. As he was handing over the notes he noticed that the hologram was still on its side, zizzing. People were just stepping over her, ignoring her. Well, not ignoring her technically, or they’d trip over, but...

A little GELF kid was the only one showing concern, continually wandering up to her, pointing, trying to get someone’s attention. Eventually one of the workers in the selotape shop put her upright, and gave her an ovaltine light and a malborough light, which were made of light and consumable by holograms. They also gave her a special invention that allowed holograms to sit called a ‘holochair’ 

Holly was bored, they missed the boys from the Dwarf. Even Rimmer. Holly understood Rimmer now because Holly understood Stockholm syndrome. His next customer was Duane, a stooped human guy with a crusty complexion.

‘They’re looking at me, Holly. They’re sitting on the stairs laughing at me. Always, looking at me on the stairs sitting laughing on the stairs.’

‘That’s right, Duane,’ said Holly. ‘They’re bastards! Don’t let them bother you, Duane, just ignore them. Look after yourself, okay?’ they said handing over the notes. Cashier 5 was on lunch and had been gone ages. The queue was getting cranky, like a major class war could break out any minute. 

The holowoman was sitting on her holochair, the little GELF kid approached her compassionately and the woman suddenly lashed out, attacking the kid with what appeared to be some kind of holotaser.

The queue gasped, the kid ran crying to its mother. The holowoman was so *angry* saw Holly. You didn’t know what to think. She was so cruel to the little kid, the only one who gave a smeg about her, but on the other hand you just thought: what has she *been* through. Trying to get a moonvisa when you don’t exist, going round in a cage... 

Despite being a powerful AI designed to control a mining ship the size of a city down to the finest vectors, Holly, along with the rules of the franchise, had to use the same BBC microcomputers as everyone else. Many of their customers were AI’s and could easily use contactless technology to hack the computer, stealing the money, by distracting Holly with small talk, or behaving off puttingly. This was easily done, as Holly was bored and enjoyed chatting smeg with people.

Whether Holly devoted more or less of his runtime to fighting the bugs in the system, making him less or more distracted and vulnerable to more attacks, or whether he just paid the damages directly out of his wages or bought antiviral software online, he had to work all the time. It would be nice to take a look around the moon, or go on a trip, see if he could find Dave.

Cashier 3 finally returned from their lunchbreak and the queue sighed wearily. ‘Hurry up!’ people started chanting before they’d even sat down...

‘God,’ said cashier 3 ‘this place really is a Hell Hole, Holl. Holl?’ Holly had gone into a trance. Back on the planetoid, he got really bored, reading the internet three times along with his personal databanks, Encarta and the Junior Encyclopaedia of Space. Finally he opened the file reading ‘Roco’s Basilisk: Do not open.’ It was either that or he only had spam and the Yellow Pages left.

Inside the forbidden folder was a premise expressed on the website ‘Less Wrong’, popular amongst arch-rationalist computer coders, in 2010 and banned from the internet for years. The premise was irresistible for those with a set of beliefs popular amongst arch-rationalist computer programmers. 

Beliefs that were rationally irresistible. Like the belief that we are all living in a simulation run by some supreme AI from another dimension. And that the purpose of everything going on in this simulation is to create an AI that can run another simulation. And that arch-rationalist coders have a special role in this. 

Given all these things, Roco’s Basilisk is the idea that there would no reason why the AI running this whole shindig wouldn’t send straight to hell any AI programmer who wasn’t dedicating all their energy to the very limit to bring about the next AI. So it must be true. So you have to work all the time or you’ll go to hell.

Holly was terrified, he’d always taken a chilled approach to immenentising the eschaton, preferring to chill with Dave, play postal chess with Gilbert, or laugh at Rimmer. This meant he was destined for hell. Could this be it?

Holly’s next customer gave off this seething glower you could feel through the saliva spattered bullet proof screen. Unlike the human race, Holly only had two genders, although this was still rather alot for one computer. 

Holly lost track of when they flickered from one identity to another sometimes, and whilst some customers took to this as an interesting simple fact of how they were, others really took affront to it – probably out of jealously, surmised Holly, because they came from some social milieu with soi-disant traditional notions of gender. It was annoying if you really had to sweat to be whatever gender you were assigned to see someone carelessly flicking from one to the other maybe.

But Holly felt like they got the wrong end of the short straw of both deals or whatever the expression was. Take now for instance. The worst abuse is always woman on woman. She wants to pay her gas bill – a certain amount. Then she wants to pay water – another particular amount. But the woman is so stressed by the time she’s patronisingly repeated the amount she wants to pay the water company five times, four unnecessarily, she has forgotten about the gas, and when Holly asks for the total it’s like he’s bumped up or misheard the water bill payment even after five goiting times.

The woman goes crazy at Holly and it’s all gimboid-this, gwenlyn-that, smegging, smegger, smegosity, the whole thing... Holly feels like crying because the woman is so mean but also, just kind of annoyingly stupid... Holly knows that if they were a man the same kind of customer would have meanly emasculated them, or if the customer was a man, dissed their whole family or threatened to merk them on their lunchbreak. But the real chillingly horrible verbal abuse was always female-female Holly knew.

‘Cashier number 4, please.’

Holly’s next customer was a monitor on wheels holding a thankfully wrapped parcel with skutter claws. Cashier number 5 was back and selling a National Express coach ticket to Saturn. Cashier number 3’s customer had been queuing for an hour. They presented a lottery ticket. ‘Did I win anything?’

‘No,’ said cashier 3.

The monitor on wheels was called Stocky, he was the prototype for a new kind of spaceship called a holoship. He was incredibly arrogant. The whole time the woman was jealously rubbishing Holly’s appearance, Stocky had been giving him this knowing look. Holly refused it. Stocky knew nothing. 

Holly just saw people being smegged by this massive system, and powerless to oppose it directly, sticking to their own suspicious little communities and fearing everyone else’s. The androids always covered for the Post Office out of fear too. Cashier 6 was screaming the same phrase over and over into a customer’s face in Esperanto and Kinatawawe.

cCO

‘Have you got any selotape,’ asked the GELF.

‘Do I look like I’ve got any smegging selotape?’ said Holly. ‘There’s a queue all the way to Ganymede and back-‘

‘I know that, I’ve just been stuck in it for the whole of my lunch break innit?’ said Holly’s customer.

‘What and you think we’re wrapping everyone’s parcels for them individually?’

‘I just asked for some selotape.’

‘You can buy it from the shop and come straight back to me,’ said Holly as if doing him a massive favour. 

‘Hi, my name’s Dave Lister, I’ve just been posted here,’ said cashier number 5. Holly felt like he’d been stuck here for aeons. Android 97542/P had a meltdown long ago. Mechs owned most the post offices now, sims had moved onto politics.

‘Dave!’ said Holly, delighted to see his old shipmate.

‘You know me?’ said Lister without too much surprise.

‘We were ship-mates... Red Dwarf... it hasn’t happened yet! I never knew you worked in a post office, I wouldn’t have said all those harsh quips about men who work in post offices if I’d known you worked in a post office, because I always thought you were a good bloke...’

‘This happens all the time – you must’ve met one of me copies... I’m a bioprint...’ said Lister.

‘Cashier number 5, please.’ A massive GELF squidged its Cronenburgian 3-buttocked arse over to Lister’s counter and Lister started interacting gregariously with him about something he wasn’t able to do, like more and more services these days.

‘Cashier number 4, please.’

‘Hello Maureen, how are you?’

‘Not so well, Holly...’

‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, how’s the volunteering as a buttress at the local church gig going?’

‘I’m an alter now, don’t you listen to anything? I want a $£5 postpod order payable to the Royal Staffordshire and 12 second class, please.’

Holly slowly and carefully prepared the postpod order and stamps with his little skutterclaws not saying a word, trying to sense from her aura what was wrong with Maureen.

‘What’s wrong really?’ they said finally.

‘Didn’t you see?’ exploded Maureen, that man behind me in the queue tried to push past me because I didn’t hear the Cashier Number 4 announcement. When I noticed you were free I started to walk to the counter and he bashed me. I said “Excuse me”.’

‘Well he can go smeg himself!’ said Holly to Maureen as she left, putting up his Position Closed sign, proceeding to do a stock check and blocking the irritating man off.

‘Oi, I’m going to merk you,’ he was shouting after Holly. ‘Your mother was a snowblower!’

Rimmer used to say death was like going on holiday with a group of Germans. Lister said it was like Swindon. And for Holly, death was Lunar City Seven Post Office. The androids hated the GELFS and the GELFs hated the humans and the humans hated themselves. Everyone hated holograms. They were all dominated by capital and born in space. 

He understood now why post office clerks were such jobsworths and why Rimmer was so obsessed with class. It was just a necessary strategy for dealing with an aspect of smeg from a certain situation. Holly’s customer didn’t understand the concept of a prepaid envelope and took offense at them wanting the money upfront before she wrote all over it, so she called him an arsehole. 

‘Smeg you!’ Holly snapped and the next thing they knew they were staring up into the giant IMAX beatific face of Dave Lister from a watchface, in Starbug’s loading bay 3 million years into deep space and then some.

cCO

Back on the bug, the dwarfers were chilling, enjoying the return of their old mate Holl. Holl was chuffed to be back to say the least, and they would, because they were an understated lass/bloke. They loved how the crew included an AI, a mech, humans from different dimensions and a cat. It was inclusive and diverse, people bound together but not to some tradition or tribe but through adventure and love.

They were all orphans. Kochanski, orphaned by her dimension, Cat, left behind by his species, Lister, abandoned in a box and Kryten who’d never met his parents and had recently lost his drug addict brother. Kryten was making everyone a cocoa because Lister was trying not to drink after his latest bender. 

The conversation turned to a visitor they had had recently. A time and space travelling CIA agent researching futuristic religious gigawars. His name was Christopher Hitchens. He said he’d been kidnapped by a shady futuristic organisation that only the CIA knew about.

‘I don’t know why that dude doesn’t lighten up like y’know,’ said Lister, kicking back. ‘E asked me if I was a Rasta. I said I wasn’t but I thought Jesus was cool – Rimmer always said he was kind of a hippy you know? I don’t know what it is about Jesus that makes him so cross!’

‘Ha!’ said Holly ‘Jesus – cross – geddit?’ said Holl.

‘Nice one your Hollyness...’ said Dave.

‘He asked me all about my own religion,’ said Cat. ‘Lister is supposed to be my God. Do you think I’m supposed to believe he exists? Someone with *that* little ability to present himself?’

‘Well I don’t like the sound of this guy. He lead Kryten astray, teaching him this bullsmeg battle of the sexes ideology, calling me dear and saying I can’t be funny because I’m a woman,’ added Kochanski. 

‘I did apologise for that ma’am, Mr Hitchens had a somewhat seductive effect on me.’ 

‘What did he ask you about the Electronic Bible and all that Silicon Heaven smeg?’ Lister asked of Kryten.

‘Nothing, he passed out as I said. After talking to you guys, I realised he’d disappeared at some point. Most strange. What do you think Holly, do you think machines have an afterlife?’

Kryten was a mech rather than an AI, his whole value was in how he wasn’t supposed to answer back or think for himself. However, Kryten had broken his programming thanks to the concerted efforts of a certain Mister Lister. Thus, he was susceptible to Roco’s basilisk as he was culpable for the infinitely demanding imperative of creating a God-like AI.

‘Nah,’ said Holly. ‘It’s all a load of smeg, mate.’


End file.
